Sucker Love
by Nikkel
Summary: She hated her. She loved her. She hated her. She loved her. Piper x Alex.
1. Chapter 1

**Sucker Love  
**_By Nikkel_  
(c) to Jenji Kohan

* * *

She lie on her back and opened her eyes, but was blinded by the white light.

She groaned and closed them again. Her entire body felt heavy, as if she were strapped down, and her head pounded as if she had been clubbed. She tried to think back, why she hurt this way, but her memory was hazy. What happened?

She lifted her right hand to rub her forehead, but found she could barely lift it. It wasn't because she was weak or fatigued, either.

It was strapped down to the bed.

Piper's eyes popped open and she jerked up, but she didn't get very far off the bed, the leather straps on her wrists and ankles keeping her down. She wanted to kick, cry, and maybe even scream, but reason wore out in her head that doing so would have only made things worse. Instead, she exhaled, allowing the shock to settle in her chest like a sack of bricks, and laid back down.

Fuck. This was much worse than SHU. And she knew it.

She clenched her teeth and tried to relax, but she was now so tense she was shaking. Why had she been so stupid? The memories of the snow, the Christmas play, and Dogget flashed through her mind. She could have handled it any other way, and instead, she let her temper get the best of her, like a damned animal. The anger boiled in her blood as it had then, her fists clenched and ready to punch, though she couldn't really move them.

The heavy iron door to the tiny cement cell wrenched open, and a man in a white coat walked in, a clipboard and pen beneath his arm. He adjusted his rounded glass and nodded in her direction.

"Good morning, Miss Chapman," he said, and sat down in a wooden chair in the corner of the room. Piper glared at him in response. He sighed and propped his ankle over his knee. "It's good to see that you're finally awake."

Her brow knitted. How long had she been out? Was it the reason her head hurt so much? Or why it was difficult to remember what had had happened, aside from those flashes in the snow? Of course, the doctor didn't tell her, because she didn't ask. She didn't _want _to ask.

"How are you feeling today?" he asked, and she continued with her silence. She didn't look at him, either. She heard him scribbling on his notepad with a loud pen; what was he writing down? "I can see that you're angry."

She knew what he was looking for. He was waiting for some kind of reaction, something to make it so they would have to give her more meds, something that would qualify her as "insane", as were the rest of them in the Psych ward. She wasn't going to give in to that.

"Do you want to talk about why you're angry?" he probed.

_Of course not_, she wanted to retort.

"Or talk about why you attacked Miss Dogget?" he tried again.

Oh, how she wanted to scream at him that the little fucking Jesus freak attacked her first, that she had a fucking razorblade and had been planning on killing her for weeks. That she was so stuck in her stupid holy world that she couldn't get over the fact that Piper didn't believe in God. She was like a bloodthirsty, carnivorous rabbit that wouldn't die, no matter how many times it got beat down. It was all of this, and on top of it, Piper knew, what the fucking hillbilly had done to Alex. At that moment, Piper couldn't tell which one of the women she hated more. Her rage surfaced to her teeth like bile, but she held it back, determined to keep her trap shut. If she let it out, it would only mean more trouble. The beast within was why she was in here now.

The doctor stood up. "I can't help you unless you help me. I'll be here in two days time when you're ready to talk, Miss Chapman."

He left, and Piper suddenly wished he was back. Maybe it would be good to let the crazy out of her. Tell him the whole story, from the moment she met Alex in the bar, to smuggling the money in the Belgian airport, to saying fuck it to everything, to meeting Larry, and then finally winding up where she was now. She wasn't a totally unreasonable person, was she? There was purpose behind the actions she had made. Or, she could have screamed at him, and they would have given her sleep drugs, and she could escape from the awful torment of her own mind and wild emotions. That didn't sound like a bad idea, either.

Instead, she was left alone, wide awake and victim to her own thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2

She finally couldn't sleep anymore. It was too cold for that.

Alex woke long before the sun rose, her breath coming out in a fine mist, her whole body curled up beneath the flimsy excuse for a blanket. She lay in the darkness of her makeshift mattress, shivering. How she hated the cold.

"_Good morning ladies_," the PA system woman droned. "_Several heating units around the building have broken down. Repairs will be conducted today..._"

"Are you fucking serious?"

"Fuck this place!"

"Some bullshit right here!"

Her fellow inmates responded to the announcement as such. The fluorescent lights of the cell block flickered on, and the complaints intensified. Alex grunted and sat up, the blanket draped around her shoulders, and put on her glasses. She could take her usual hot shower, but she knew that she would only end up being cold again. She would rather stink than be cold at this point.

She changed into her daily khaki smock and slipped on a pair of shoes, headed for breakfast like the rest of the women around her. She kept her eyes to the floor, not wanting to look at any of them, feeling groggy from the uncomfortable sleep and generally irritable on a frosty morning. She shuffled behind the other khaki-coated inmates down the hallway and into the cafeteria, but did not join the breakfast line. Instead, she went straight for the hot water station and poured herself a cup, complete with a pouch of Earl Grey; she turned and paused, scanning the room for a place to sit. After several months, she knew which tables to sit at and which ones not to, but today was more different than others. It had been different for the past two weeks. Where others sat down with their breakfast trays, she avoided, and found a table in the corner of the room near the window. The bench creaked and the table wobbled as she sat down on it.

An icy draft seeped through the window, nipping at her bare arm. She rubbed it with her other hand, her tea hot and steaming before her on the table. At that moment, someone sat down on the opposite side.

"I suppose it makes sense that I get the coldest table in the room," Red snorted, holding her own mug of tea.

Alex raised a perplexed brow. "No breakfast for you?"

"Ha!" Red scoffed. "Those wetbacks are starving me out. I don't think I mind, though. I wouldn't want to eat their dirty food anyways. And what about you?"

"I was never big on breakfast," Alex replied, shrugging.

"Of course. It's why you're so skinny, I bet."

"Beats me."

The two women settled into silence, each of them sipping their tea, while the rest of the cafeteria bustled about with plastic silverware and general morning commotion. At this same moment, though, the doors burst open and a too-familiar inmate came prancing through.

"_Ladies, rejoice, for the Lord has risen_!" Tiffany Dogget proclaimed in her ever-prominent, rusty tone. "_I have seen the Devil for whom she is and God has put her in her place_!"

Everyone in the room turned to see her, her head wrapped with a thick bandage and her arm in a sling, her one visible eye black and puffy. Despite a busted lip and crutch for support, she was vibrant as ever, radiating with a joy so large all of her rotten teeth showed.

"I am His Crusader, His Justice! He chose _me_ to sniff her out and eliminate her, and I have done _exactly _that!" she hollered, tossing her crutch up in the air in victory.

"What the hell is she talking about?" Alex muttered to Red, who only shook her head to keep quiet.

"Yo!" one of the girls called out. "Who ya hatin' on?"

"I'm talkin' about that fuckin' smart-mouthed, know-it-all, shit-for-brains fuckin' Chapman, that's who! Ya'll probably didn't even notice she was missin', but _I _took it upon God's name that she'll get her sins punished for! Same goes for the rest of ya's that choose to defile the Lord and his teachings. You'll end up in Psych just like her!"

Alex was on her feet faster than she could even think, her fists clenched and every muscle tense and ready to launch at the rednecked rat.

"What's a matter, _dyke_?" Dogget spat. "Hit a nerve? You pissed off your girlfriend's a stupid fuck-up and beat the shit outta me and landed herself in Psych?"

"She's not my girlfriend," Alex snarled in retort.

"Coulda fooled me. Right, girls?" Dogget replied, to which the cafeteria snickered and rolled their eyes. Alex's face burned and she felt powerless, glaring at Dogget, shunned to the corner with everyone's back to her. She swiftly turned on her heel and sat back down, choosing to cold shoulder everyone around her, now glaring at her half-drunken tea instead.

"She's not worth your time, hun," Red said softly. "Or you'll end up in Psych yourself."

Alex glanced at her. What did she mean? Dogget or Piper? It felt as if both of them were ripping claws into her back, holes in her heart, and she was bleeding all over the floor. She hated the way that everyone could see through her at this moment. Maybe she could march over to Dogget and beat her ass some more and wind up in SHU, just to get away from everyone. Solitary currently sounded so much better than being where she was now.

"Do not be upset. This was not, by any means, your fault," Red said, to which Alex glanced at her again, her cheeks still hot. "Piper chose to assault Dogget."

"How do you know that?" Alex snapped. How did anyone know what happened? It was fitting of Piper's personality to lash out in anger, but never to the point of laying her hands around someone's throat, much less give them a black eye, or land them in the infirmary.

"I'm surprised you're so eager to jump to her defense after all the shit she put you through," Red commented, to which Alex shrugged, but she knew that Red had point. She wasn't supposed to care anymore, but her body seemed to resist that idea. It had been a week since Piper had told her she chose Larry, and even if her mind understood that, the rest of her did not. She absolutely hated it.

"I'm not jumping to her defense. I'm just saying we don't know all the details. I'm not going to judge like everyone else here," Alex finally said, her eyes steely behind her glasses. "Besides. The fucking bitch deserved it."

"Perhaps," Red mused. "But perhaps we don't know the full story, as you said, either."

Alex scoffed, and to her luck, the period bell chimed.

"Out to the yard, ladies, out to the yard," Mendez said.

"We ain't dressed for that!" Poussey shouted back.

"You need your fresh air," Mendez replied with a naughty grin, eyeing the chests of many. "It'll do you hotheads some good."

"Motherfucker," Alex swore beneath her breath, but followed everyone else out into the snow-covered yard, shoes crunching over the fresh blanket and the wind much stronger than the draft that had been sneaking through the window. She crossed her arms over her chest, her head tucked, wishing she had a coat, but it had been stolen by none other than her bunkmate, one of Dogget's followers. In reality, because of her, there wasn't much she had anymore, including a mattress. She was surprised every morning when she still had socks.

She parted away from the huddled groups, choosing to walk along the chain-link fence that outlined the premises. She walked until she couldn't hear their voices and only the wind. She then stopped and closed her eyes, reveling in the quiet, the ice, and the peace of it all. Still, she shivered, but the long-awaited serenity was worth the freezing.

A strange, clucking her noise caught her attention. Alex looked up, and believe it or not, there was, without a doubt, a bright red chicken just beyond the fence. She blinked and shook her head; fantastic, now she was hallucinating. But the chicken clucked and babbled again, digging through the shallow layer of snow, uncovering the dirt underneath.

So, it did exist.

But even if it did exist, it was still out of reach. Alex reached a hand out to the chain-link fence, fingers closing around the metal openings. Hadn't Piper mentioned that it was inside the yard? But how could that be? Chickens couldn't fly.

The chicken pawed at the ground again, and Alex's eyes widened in epiphany. It didn't fly _over_ the fence, but...

"There you are!" Nicky hollered, running over to her. "What are you doing so far away from everyone?"

Alex paused, first looking to Nicky, then back to the chicken, but it had seemingly vanished into thin air. Maybe it wasn't real, afterall.

"Trying to find some peace and quiet," she replied. "But it's obviously a useless endeavor."

"Oh, sorry. Want me to leave?"

"Well, you're already here, and it would be rude of me to say yes."

Nicky came closer to her, their shoulders touching. "You're upset, aren't you? By Pennsatucky?"

Alex rolled her eyes. "Is it seriously that obvious?"

"Hate to say it, but yeah, it is."

"Well, I'm not. I _don't _have feelings for Chapman anymore, despite what everyone thinks."

"So, does that mean..." Nicky's voice trailed off, but she looked to her companion with intense curiosity. Alex returned the look, and a knowing smirk traced her thin, chapped lips. Nicky's eyes were bright and eager, and Alex knew without having to say anything what was on the girl's mind. She glanced at one of the guards posted outside the doors, keeping an eye on the yard, but he was too busy shivering and trying to stay warm to really watch the place. Alex turned and stepped closer to Nicky, enough so they were inches away from being face-to-face.

"I'm cold," Alex whispered, her breath coming out in a foggy mist.

Nicky slipped a hand around her hip, pulling her ever closer. "I know just how to warm you up, then."


End file.
